boost on the street

I walked out the back door of the original DoubleShot, way back when we were single-wide, and found a large group of workers gathered from the City of Tulsa streets department. A bunch of big, burly men in t-shirts and jeans, suntanned and calloused, milled around while a couple of corporate, white collar, salesman-types put on a demonstration. They were selling a spray can that they claimed would remove graffiti. I listened to their pitch and watched as one man sprayed the foaming paint remover onto a NO PARKING sign that had been painted over with white and then stenciled in black. (As I recall, it was an old fashioned television being carried off by balloons.) They waited for the paint to peel and the other guy sprayed water on it. But the paint persisted. They tried again and this time scrubbed. 

I asked the guy standing next to me, “How do you discern the difference between graffiti and street art?” The man replied, “It’s all graffiti to me.”

One of the salesmen remarked that this must be some heavy duty paint these guys are using. Because their demonstration was failing. I chuckled and said, “It’s probably that ninety-nine cent spray paint from Home Depot.”

I know, because I’m the one who painted it. <gasp>

One man’s street art is another man’s graffiti. Everyone has their own opinion about what should be allowed on the walls in public spaces. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I love street art - the kind that most people would call “graffiti.” I enjoy seeking it out in alleyways and underpasses. I appreciate the talent of guys and gals who festoon our drab spaces with brilliant strokes using nothing but rollers and spray cans. I am not talented like that, but damn I wish I were. I’d paint the town… 

I started noticing BOOST tags several months ago. And once you start seeing them, you can’t unsee them. They’re everywhere. And they range from crudely scrawled text to ornately designed scripts that look like something you might have airbrushed on a t-shirt at the state fair. I go on long walks in dark places, exploring the edges of civilization in a type of street art scavenger hunt. And in my opinion, BOOST is the most prolific tagger in town. To say the least, I’m a big fan. I currently have pictures of over 120 different pieces (see above), and I can’t help but feel I’ve only scratched the surface. 

This project is one in homage to BOOST. The talent, the abundance, and the time it must’ve taken to decorate our collective spaces, knowing that civic and vigilante forces continually strive to paint the town gray. Communist Dictator Gray. (That should be a crayon color.)

Get a BOOST of your own and enjoy our summer shandy. It’s off-color for us, but harkens back to a time when we were a tad less concerned and had a hell of a lot more fun. It’s lemonade and coffee. Straight up. Shandy is dandy. (And a little bit renegade.)